Bother
by Shade Embry
Summary: Songfiction. Tony notes Mason's metamorphosis and lifeline. Companion to "Crossing the River."


Bother  
  
Author: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick  
  
E-Mail: AgentThespis@msn.com  
  
Rating: G  
  
Category: Songfiction  
  
Spoilers: Up to the most recent US episode  
  
Summary: In the final hour, to Mason, things begin to look different.  
  
Original Character Bio: Liz Rycoff is CTU's Chief of Technology. She is close friends with Jack and with George Mason, and has a political alliance with Mason, who wants her to go to work for him at District, but Liz's loyalty to Jack holds her back.  
  
Recommended Listening: "Bother," Corey Taylor (quoted, edited for language)  
  
Author's Notes: I have to give kudos to Xander Berkeley, whose Mason made writing a piece like this absolutely necessary. His performance and his character's new evolution are giving me a wealth of material to work with and it's been a while since I've been able to create tales so complex with the likes of great actors like him and Kiefer Sutherland and their phenomenal characters.  
  
Could be considered a companion piece to my Jack/Liz songfic, "Crossing the River."  
  
And yes, the first quote is from "Crazy/Beautiful," while the second is from "Say Anything."  
  
  
  
They say you can be anywhere when your life starts. Meet the right person and anything is possible.  
  
They also say that the bad comes with the good.  
  
George Mason met Elisabeth Rycoff, and he didn't realize how good she was until he realized how far he'd fallen. Because Liz is a mirror of everyone around her, and at the same time as she radiated Jack's strength, she radiated Mason's pain.  
  
And he looked at what he saw in her and wondered who he was; that's what we were wondering, too. She gave everyone an answer that was once a secret, and isn't a secret anymore.  
  
*Wish I was too dead to cry  
  
This self-affliction phase…*  
  
Liz has always been a hard-line believer in all that is good, because she has suffered all that is wrong. Mason, in looking at her perseverance, first saw his redemption, then wondered if he was beyond it. Right before Jack shot him with the tranquilizer, his last thought, for a split-second, was of her.  
  
*Stones to throw at my creator  
  
Massacres to which I cater…*  
  
Chappelle had always pushed him beyond all doubt. Liz had urged Mason to stand up to him. To this day, he's still not ready to do it. Every time he hangs up, he wonders why not.  
  
Because on the phone when Chappelle gave the assault order, Mason saw a body count. Mason knew it was a slaughter bound to happen. Yet he still couldn't stand up to Chappelle even as he tore inside.  
  
That was his first step away from what we thought he was – mole, betrayer, conservative loser – to what he's becoming – unlikely hero, unlikely leader.  
  
*You don't need to bother  
  
I don't need to be  
  
I'll keep slipping farther  
  
But once I hold on I won't let go 'til it bleeds…*  
  
Bank account skimming lead him to becoming the unwilling pawn of a corrupt supervisor. Crimes lead to unknown crimes, the worst crimes of all. Mason struggled for a handhold today even as he rebuffed everyone – everyone but Liz, who watched him and told him he was on his own now.  
  
On his own enough to point a gun at Serbian terrorists who were the only people who knew where Jack was. He's lucky he's alive – and he knows that.  
  
*Wish I was too dead to care  
  
If indeed I can at all…*  
  
That's not to say Mason's all sweetness and light nowadays. Withholding Alexis's morphine, what kind of sick torture was that? But Mason's done playing softball with the villains and hardball with the good guys. Now he's flipped a coin, turned a page, whatever.  
  
He wants revenge – or at least, atonement.  
  
I walked by them once:  
  
Liz: "What's happening, George?"  
  
Mason: "What isn't happening?"  
  
*Never had a voice to protest  
  
So you fed me lies to digest…*  
  
She waits for the day when he's going to run right up against Chappelle. Today may be that day.  
  
He believed all of Chappelle's lies, turned a deaf ear to Jack's truths, out of what – fear for his job? Blind ambition? Both? Something else?  
  
Now he understands he's been lied to by all but one person. In his mind, he can only trust Liz. In his mind, if she's not present, he's on his own.  
  
Chappelle will eventually have to face what he destroyed – and that's Mason.  
  
*I wish I had a reason  
  
My flaws are open season  
  
For this I gave up trying  
  
One good turn deserves my dying…*  
  
Through this all is a search for justification.  
  
Corrupt crimes like bank account skimming. Sometimes blind ambition. Belief of Chappelle's lies. Subservience to Chappelle. Taking out his anger in misplaced places. Cutting any corner to find the truth at any cost.  
  
He knows he's screwed up over and over again.  
  
At this point, he's so desperate for one untainted success that if he would have died in that garage trading Alexis for Jack, he would have done so, if only because he would have gone out doing the right thing. His life, like his job, is inconsequential right now.  
  
Palmer's phone call only pushed him over the edge.  
  
*You don't need to bother  
  
I don't need to be  
  
I'll keep slipping farther  
  
But once I hold on I won't let go 'til it bleeds…*  
  
That's how Liz ended up in the CTU van praying for his life. Mason was finally convinced to be totally selfless and he almost ended up dead.  
  
"We've done everything we can, George," she said, giving him a status report.  
  
And he came back with: "I don't believe that."  
  
*Wish I died instead I lived  
  
The zombie hides my face…*  
  
No one's ever known who he really is until today.  
  
We didn't care for him at all, thinking him another agency drone who knew no better than Chappelle or Alberta Green. But we didn't know he'd change completely in twenty-three hours.  
  
And I think when he sees tomorrow it's going to be more in the metaphorical than the literal sense.  
  
Mason's not going to let go of his last chance so easily. It's his last chance just as much as it is Jack's one chance. I'm not fond of either, but I see their desperation.  
  
I see their hopes and dreams pinned on one woman inadvertently.  
  
*Child forgotten with its memories  
  
Diaries left with cryptic entries…*  
  
She works in silence, caught in the middle of these two men, knowing she isn't comfortable with it but knowing that's what her role is now: to be forever trapped between two of her friends who are each other's antitheses.  
  
One of her subordinates was a mole, now she suspects another – the same one I do.  
  
It doesn't matter that we're talking about someone more personal to me than to her. She knows that this person is not in the game. And she knows that Mason has his suspicions, and this new man who is nothing like the man she knew will act on them in time.  
  
So she waits for him, as she has, as she waits for Jack. Looking up at him, waiting.  
  
*You don't need to bother  
  
I don't need to be  
  
I'll keep slipping farther  
  
But once I hold on I won't let go 'til it bleeds…*  
  
Mason has been in Jack's office for most of the time since he got back from the trade, only to rant one more time, a sign that part of him is still his old self. He's trapping himself, forcing himself to face a future outcome he doesn't like.  
  
And Liz is down on the floor, waiting for him to call on her because she knows he will. She knows that with Jack out, Mason is the one she turns to. And she knows eventually Mason turns to her, even when in the throes of a new crisis.  
  
One that belongs to him and him alone – a battle for his soul between the corruption he knows and the resolution he wants to know, that he first found in her.  
  
*You don't need to bother  
  
I don't need to be  
  
I'll keep slipping farther  
  
But once I hold on I'll never live down my deceits…*  
  
Eventually, she looks down and away, back to her work. Distracted, but never giving up hope.  
  
I study her for a moment, avoiding Nina's gaze, then look back into my mug before Mason comes back and yells at me for shutting down his access or getting into his personal business or whatever is next.  
  
As he sits in Jack's office and broods, looking into nothing… 


End file.
